This Is Not The Silicon Prairie

For years, I have seen people, mostly jealous governments, try to replicate Silicon Valley. Expressways have been named “Silicon something”, or “High Tech Highway”. Since I have started this blog, I have written about my disgust with trying to replicate what is going on in California. We can’t. We never will.

When we started Hyde Park Angels in 2007, one of the first things I was asked by virtually everyone was, “Is this like Silicon Valley?”. My answer was “No.”. However, one of the goals of Hyde Park Angels was to educate the midwest investor on what it was to be an angel. It didn’t compute here. If you remember programming with computer punch cards we’d call it an “endless do loop”.

Tomorrow along with a couple of friends that are on the same mission as myself, we are doing a lunch at the Union League Club. Tickets are still available, but we have 200 or more people signed up. That wouldn’t have happened back in 2007. The fact that we are doing this event at the Union League Club is amazing. One of my goals when starting HPA was to spread the word through the clubcommunity of Chicago. It was a target market of ours. We have come a long way in Chicago, but we have a long way to go.

Yesterday, my wife came across Brad Feld’s post on this same topic. He has a bigger bully pulpit than myself, so I am glad he is writing about it too. It needs to be said. It is time for us to lead the horse to water and see if it drinks.